“We couldn’t be happier that Allison Williams is our Peter Pan,” NBC Entertainment chairman Robert Greenblatt said in a statement. “She’s a lovely rising star on the award-winning show Girls — where she occasionally shows off her incredible vocal talent — and we think she will bring the perfect blend of ‘boyish’ vulnerability and bravado to save the day against Christopher Walken’s powerful Captain Hook.”

Said Williams of her high-flying role: “I have wanted to play Peter Pan since I was about three years old, so this is a dream come true.

“And besides,” she added, “what could go wrong in a live televised production with simultaneous flying, sword fighting and singing?”

UPDATE: Williams later shared on Instagram a photo of her young self as Pan:

Earlier this month at the Television Critics Assoc. summer press tour, Greenblatt shared that NBC’s second live musical endeavor — following last year’s boffo hit The Sound of Music Live!, which drew nearly 19 million total viewers — had eyed Kristen Bell for the lead, but scheduling conflicts cut that conversation short.

I think that you are absolutely right.
A combination of 3 things made the Sound of Music a surprise success last December.
1) The SOM itself has always been a beloved drawing card.
2) Carrie Underwood was very well known and very well liked
3) The show itself had relatively little competition being aired after November sweeps (NBC did not have too much confidence in it at the time. It caught NBC by surprise as well as everyone else)

Peter Pan – while certainly well known – has been done multiple times before and will not be the drawing card SOM was.
The actress is not nearly as well known.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think PP will be a bust, but it will not reach the levels that SOM did

Daughter of NBC news anchor doesn’t get lead role in NBC’s live musical though she is physically, vocally, actingwise completely qualified and has a (smaller) fanbase because producers don’t wnt tot be accused of favoritism. Nothing wrong there either.

I still don’t get the hate for Carrie Underwood in The Sound of Music. She was pretty good…but Stephen Moyer was absolutely horrible and I think that Ashley Williams will be pretty bad. She doesn’t seem very likeable or marketable.

Don’t forget The Blacklist. It was the #1 new show of last season. Season Two begins September 22nd with the first eight episodes on Mondays until November 10th and the series returns with the post Super Bowl episode on February 1st before the big move to Thursdays at 9 p.m. (going up against Scandal) starting February 5th.

This isn’t the first time the musical Peter Pan has been televised and when it was done before it was also a woman in the lead- Mary Martin. It’s tradition for the show. Why would they change that now?

Yeah, and I loved the Mary Martin version when I was a kid. But that was what? 1960? This is 2014, with HDTV. What blended together back then pops out now. And the production itself (if anything like one last year) will be far more involved.
Peter Pan has used a woman most of the time because that’s how it’s done on stage. On stage, the audience is far away. The perspective is different. You can get away with a lot. But this isn’t stage. This is on-camera. This is close up. You can’t expect the audience to suspend disbelief to the point of believing that a 26 year old woman is a young boy, usually depicted as somewhere around 10 years old (sometimes skewing up or down a couple of years).

Mary Martin, the woman for whom the musical’s score was composed and who originated the role on Broadway, was an Alto, so unless Ms. Williams isn’t an Alto, the songs are not going to have to be tweaked all that much, not the way that they would for a man.

I don’t even really know how to react to this, tbh. I think having Peter played by a woman is kind of gimmicky in this day and age, and Allison’s just going to be rather bizarro in the role. A flying pretty girl that sounds and sings like a girl, in a bad wig, playing a guy. Yeah. OK.

Carrie Underwood’s acting turned out to have a trainwreck kind of quality that made the first live musical really memorable, so maybe they’re going for something that’s going to make for a freak draw this time too. I have to guess that they’re doing this on purpose for ratings.

The logic is that you can get away with more on stage, which is far away. Adults can play children, and they use them because you can do stuff with adults that you can’t usually do with a kid (throw them over the audience on a wire, or whatever). But as I said above, this isn’t stage, so it doesn’t make any sense at all. And now they will have to cast adults in the other young roles, just so she doesn’t look completely ridiculous as the only adult playing a kid.
The kids did a great job in The Sound of Music last year. They should have given this to a kid.

No they shouldn’t. The person playing Peter Pan has to have some sort of notoriety as well as a lot of professional experience (you’re trusting they’ll pull off live tv with a large viewership without screwing up so it helps to have seasoning that most kids probably won’t have at that age) and actual acting ability. Allison Williams may not have the following of Carrie Underwood, but you can trust her to do the role. You know how often kids come along that are talented enough as actors to pull off something like this? They’re rare. Most of the time you get stiff stage-parented youngsters that are too over the top. It’s hard enough for them to cast Annie. NBC doesn’t have time to do some nationwide talent search only to have to make it work somehow if things get screwy–even then it wouldn’t be ready in time. If you cast a woman you get someone who’s generally small but still bigger than the kids, with a voice you don’t have to worry about cracking. Casting a boy the right type might backfire if he hits puberty.

I think she’s kind of a bizarre choice. Her voice is ok, but kind of nasal in the available clips. She doesn’t look “boyish” like the women before who who played the role and she doesn’t appear to have anything on her resume which would indicate she can handle the flying part of the job. But I guess we’ll see. What other Mary Martin roles can we put on TV with bland celebrities who’ve never done Broadway? Oh, and Christopher Walken doing Hook live sounds pretty scary as well.

Carrie Underwood brought the eyeballs to Sound of Music. Not sure this girl is a big enough name to attract an audience plus I’m not sure a female lead for Peter Pan is a smart idea for television–most people are more familiar with the Disney animated movie than with theatrical tradition of the show.

Allison does not have to bring in the eyeballs, that is why they announced Christopher Walken first. He is going to be the star and face of the show. And do not underestimate the familiarity of the stage show, it probably has been put on by every high school drama department every couple years. Not to mention the first time NBC aired Peter Pan Live (with a female lead) it was their most watched show ever up to that point.

Even though Carrie Underwood’s acting was stiff, The Sound of Music was still fun to watch because it’s good material. It won the Tony Award for Best Musical the same year that Gypsy was in the running. So given a talented supporting cast, watching it was enjoyable despite the star.
Peter Pan, on the other hand, isn’t that good a show to begin with. Add in the cringe-inducing acting choices that come from adults trying to portray children (watching Kathleen Nolan try to act like a 12 year old girl was as awkward as watching Mary Martin try to be a little boy), the entirely racist portrayal of Native Americans, and the songs- blech. Casting actors closer to the character’s ages would have made the already poor show less awkward. And if they can get 3 boys to sing soprano in Billy Elliot, there are boys who can sing Peter’s part, it’s alto.

I feel sorry for her. No matter what gig she gets, idiots will say it’s nepotism. Not the fact she’s a pretty great singer, or she’s starring on a hugely talked about show, and does a good job on it too. I’m really excited to see her in this role.